


Delirium Tremens

by MrsHamill



Series: Sandman Crossover Project [15]
Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Multiple Crossovers, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 22:20:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6027511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsHamill/pseuds/MrsHamill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What are you most afraid of? Pairing: Sirius Black/Delirium</p>
            </blockquote>





	Delirium Tremens

**Author's Note:**

> Thalia is evil. Thank you to my daughter for her assurance that yes, this was sufficiently er, Serious. :-)

* * *

He knew who she was, of course, from the moment he saw her, knew her from both school and his own experience. James had always told him he walked the fine line between silliness and insanity, and yes, he must have.

So when she appeared in his cell at Azkaban, he wasn't surprised to see her. Maybe surprised he still had enough sanity to recognize her, but not too surprised to find her in the house of madness. And she helped him, and that he hadn't expected at all.

"I know you, I do, I seen you before. Good doggie!"

The dementors had just left his cell, left him ice cold, limp and panting on the wet, slimy floor. The only thing that had saved him was his knowledge that Peter had actually survived. He was desperate to get out of Azkaban to find that rat, a rat in more ways than one. But no one had ever managed to escape from Azkaban. Well, no one had ever escaped alive and whole.

"No, they not be nice here, I know." She crouched down beside him and patted him on his head. She was wearing fishnet stockings but her feet were bare and sticking out the ends. A ripped leather bombing jacked covered a sheer pink body stocking. Her eyes were different color, and her hair matched them, in reverse.

He wondered how she could stand to visit this place of agonies. "This is my home, la la la... one of my homes. I have a fishie. Would you like to see? I know your secret."

"Help me..." he managed to gasp in a voice raw from screaming.

Her face was so sad. "Um, I don't know if I can do that, doggie, I have to keep to rules too, you know. My fishie sings in a voice that sounds like the ocean, did you know that? And I have a doggie too, or I will have a doggie, because I seen that too. Why don't you look like a doggie on the outside? You look like a doggie on the inside..."

A dog. He grasped the lifeline she threw him and tucked it in tight to his soul. After a moment, he managed the change, managed to turn into Padfoot. And things were better, if not as colorful. Then again, her hair clashed with her body stocking, so he wasn't giving up much.

"Yes! That's the good doggie!" She clapped her hands and the sound transmuted into butterflies. "I like doggies. They belong to me and to themselves all at once, did you know that?"

Things were better. As a dog, he couldn't be harmed by the damned dementors. They couldn't take his happiness from him because a dog's happiness was integral to it's very being.

He still had to turn back into himself at times, though. When that supercilious jackass from the Ministry came by, he had to look like a human. And sometimes, when _she_ visited, he'd turn from Padfoot into a human, to talk to her better.

"If you live here, you must know how to get out," he said to her once, at the end of a particularly trying day. It had been all he could do to keep his animus persona stable. 

"No, I donts like things like that," she said, her mismatched eyes gazing in different directions. The fishnet stockings had been exchanged for shocking orange, ripped tights, the same color as the left side of her hair. "But I like you, good doggie. I'm going to have a doggie soon."

He worried. He was panicked about the baby, terrified what might happen to poor Harry. Lily and James were beyond his help, he knew that, though the thought of what had happened to them filled his mind with despair and fury. No one knew it was that bastard Pettigrew who had betrayed them. He had to get out!

But he couldn't get out. He asked her, begged her, over and over, and each time she just looked at him with her green eye and her blue eye, her face suffused with sadness. "This place is mine too," she told him once, as she stroked his fur. When he was Padfoot, he couldn't see the colors in her eyes. "I can dance here. You're mine, you've been mine for a _looooong_ time, but you didn't knows it. Don't you _like_ being with me?"

He did, actually; she was an anchor, someone, some _thing_ that reminded him of the world outside the weeping walls at Azkaban. One of the Endless. James once said he'd seen Dream, in a dream of course, and didn't seem to think that was anything much. But he knew. The Endless were not lightly taken, lightly seen. Having her here was scarier than the dementors, in a way.

She would sing to him, sometimes, in a high, little-girl voice. Once, she came dressed in nothing but iridescent fishes, all of which sang nonsense in various voices. And once, he'd asked her about Voldemort. It was the only time he'd ever seen her look frightened.

"He's mine too," she whispered. "But I donts like him. I can't control him. He's scary."

He'd agreed; Voldemort was certainly scary. Anyone who could make one of the Endless frightened was definitely very, very scary.

There were times when he thought he would have to switch back to human to avoid becoming subsumed by his animus. But the dementors became adept at monitoring him for those times, and would always swoop in, try to suck any happiness he had left out of him, so he'd have to turn back. Being Padfoot was saving his sanity, but at the same time, it was sucking him dry of his life. He longed to see Remus again. He worried about Remus, wished he knew whether Remus was taking his wolfsbane properly, how he was coping with the loss of his two best friends.

And he wanted to know where Pettigrew was. That was a score he would settle, some day, somehow.

He would listen to the howls and screams of his fellow inmates, knowing that whenever their voices were raised, she would come. She was always so happy, so carefree, but underneath she smelled sad. She smelled lonely. He was happy to see her because he could make her happy by thumping his tail when she petted him, by licking her face until she giggled. He would chase the odd little fishes around his room and that would make her smile too.

Then one day, he realized he was being subsumed, he was becoming Padfoot. 

He risked changing back into human for a while, tried to remember what colors looked like (there were no colors in his cell, only black, white and gray) tried to remember what Remus looked like (looked like, not smelled like), tried to remember what it was like to make love to Remus (Remus had green eyes, green was the color of grass). He huddled in on himself, wondering why the dementors hadn't sensed his change, grateful for the reprieve. 

After a few moments, he realized there was more screaming than usual. Being Padfoot intensified every sound until he couldn't tell what was more and what was less. But yes, there were more screams, so that meant there were more prisoners for the dementors to suck dry. And, suddenly, she was there.

"You called me!" she exclaimed, happily. "Good doggie!"

She was an oasis of color in his world gone monopain, and he devoured her with his eyes. "Scared," he muttered as she skipped and danced around his room, mirror images of herself rotating widdershins. "I don't know what's real..."

She giggled, then sucked all her images into herself and threw her small arms around his neck. "I think I know how you can get out, if you still want to," she whispered. Up close, her eyes looked even more mad than he felt.  
  
"Oh, yes, please yes..."

"You haveta promise me you'll call me, you _haveta_ , I don't wanna lose you, good doggie," she said, and he nodded, frantically nodded, anything to get out of here, to find Remus again. He would call her as often as he could. "Okay, then," she said, then began whispering in his ear.

Sirius Black listened well as Delirium whispered in his ear, memorizing her words. 

Freedom.


End file.
